mikemcgarry wrote:
282552 wrote:
Hi Mike
Can you please explain this line to me "Among the students who speak French, four times as many speak German as don't"
Dear
282552,
Yes, I am happy to help.
We can divide all students who speak French into two groups
Group A = those who speak French and who also speak German
Group B = those who speak French but who do not speak German
(Group A) + (Group B) = all students who speak French. The sentence says that (Group A) is four times bigger than (Group B). That's the meaning.
While I wasn't intending this, this is actually a sophisticated SC structure, an instance of common words dropped in parallelism. For a discussion of this topic, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/dropping-c ... -the-gmat/Here's the sentence again with the common word included:
Among the students who speak French, four times as many speak German as don't speak German.
That's the end of the sentence.
The idiom at the beginning is also tricky --- "
among [group], X is more/less/etc. than Y." By beginning with "
among [group]", we are saying that we are confining our statement only to members of that group.
Among Democrats, women outnumber men.
Among universities in California, Stanford has the best reputation.
When the sentence begins, "
among the students who speak French," we are saying that we are going to consider all French-speaking students as a single group, and completely ignore all the students who don't speak French. Inside this category of all French-speaking students, we are comparing German-speakers to non-German-speakers.
Does all this make sense?
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thank you for your explanations.
I may have different interpretation of the question.
So, quoting your explanation :
"We can divide all students who speak French into two groups
Group A = those who speak French and who also speak German
Group B = those who speak French but who do not speak German
(Group A) + (Group B) = all students who speak French. The sentence says that (Group A) is four times bigger than (Group B). That's the meaning. "
I agree with Group A and Group B.
If we write this mathematically : French = A + B (i)
From the question, "Among the students who speak French, four times as many speak German as don't"
If we put this into equation : A = 4B (ii)
Combining (i) and (ii) : French = 4B + B = 5B
I think this equation differs with the one you have on your explanation.
Appreciate if you can provide guidance on this.